Reflections on the 25th anniversary of Baumeister & Leary’s seminal paper on the need to belong

Abstract

This special issue celebrates the impact of Baumeister and Leary’s paper on the need to belong on its 25th birthday. This seminal work identified the importance of social connections for humans, suggested that the human need to belong is analogous to our needs for food and water, and identified the invisible hand that guides much of the research in social psychology. The first three articles in this special issue provide examples of how the need to belong has expanded from Baumeister and Leary’s original conception of a need for close relationships to a broader need for all kinds of social connections. The next two articles demonstrate the impact of the need to belong. The final two papers give the final word to the paper’s original authors, Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary.